Climbing Nutcracker 5 pitch, 5.8

Climbing Nutcracker, 5 pitch (5.8)

June 16, 2001

		Nutcracker, originally known as Nutcracker Sweet, is one of many classic routes in Yosemite. Five pitch, six hundred feet of perfect granite.
On the top of second pitch We didn't know that yet, but this was our last comfortable belay station.			Our shinny rack!
	I've been climbing with Cam regularly at Planet Granite for one year. Nutcracker sounded like a good test at the time. I was climbing 5.9 in the gym, Cam 5.11. He has led a three pitch 5.9 in Arizona last September, and he has climbed Nutcracker as the second six years ago. Even though I have never climbed multi-pitch route, and the only lead climb I've done outdoors was an easy 5.8 single pitch in Castle Rock; I felt I had a chance to bag this as a lowly second. We booked the camp ground in April. Consulted SuperTopo for route diagrams and gear requirement. I put in the order with REI in May. We started anxiously waiting for the day to come.
Feeling beautiful!	Nothing we could've done in the gym or in Castle Rock would have prepared us for what Yosemite's granite can offer. At times, I seriously doubted my sanity: traversing the smooth surface, while constanly reminding myself "don't look down, don't look down" the five hundred feet of air below and all that seductively beautiful forest lay beneath. Slowly but surely, we managed, one pitch at a time. All that new experiences, all that first-time's: hanging belay in the sun, noticing my toe slowly melting away in the burning heat yet there was nothing I could do about it hanging off a tiny ledge, listening to the whisper of the wind, feeling the rope to understand when to give slack and when to take cuz Cam was out of sight and out of ear-shot... Cam was truely amazing that he didn't fall, not even once! It took us six hours. We did it. :)			On the last pitch. Cam insisted on taking a picture for me. I was too tired to care.

		One hundred feet down, five hundred feet to go...